Abstract

To discover whether Yvan Dutil's interstellar message (18 September, p 36), or any other message destined for the stars, is decipherable by aliens, surely it should be tested by humans first.

It would be easy to assemble a group of scientists, give them the intended message�without any information about what it is�and see if they can decode it. How scientists on Earth fare would give some idea of how well, or badly, alien scientists are likely to do. This seems an obvious test but there was no mention of it in the article. Is it done?